Abstract: Around 1940, engineers working on communication systems encountered a new challenge: How can one preserve the integrity of digital data,
where minor errors in transmission can have catastrophic effects? The
resulting theories of information (Shannon 1948) and error-correcting
codes (Hamming 1950) created a ``marriage made in heaven'' between
mathematics and its applications. On the one hand emerged a profound
theory that could measure information and preserve it under a variety
of errors; and on the other hand the practical consequences propelled
telephony, satellite communication, digital hardware and the internet.
In this talk I will give a brief introduction to the history of the mathematical theory of communication and then describe some of my work in this area that focus on efficient algorithms that can deal with
large amounts of error, and on communication when sender and receiver
are uncertain about each other's context.

Speaker Profile: Professor Madhu Sudan is from the Computer Science department at Harvard University. Professor Sudan has a large body of highly influential work in many areas of Theoretical Computer Science, including Error Correcting Codes, Probabilistically Checkable Proofs, and Property Testing. He has been the recipient of many awards, notably the Nevanlinna Prize awarded in 2002, and the Infosys Prize awarded in 2014.
Professor Sudan has recently been offered the Jubilee Professorship by Indian Academy of Sciences. The distinguishing feature envisaged in this professorship is that students, teachers and researchers from India should draw maximum benefits and inspiration by their close interaction with Jubilee Professor. Professor R. K. Shyamsundar, CSE department, IIT Bombay, has been instrumental in coordinating this visit.
* If anyone would like to attend this talk, kindly contact organizer at: nutan@cse.iitb.ac.in